Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Regular FeedBlitz watchers will have noted a sudden drop in our circulation number - down from 3.4 million yesterday to 2.4 million today. What, you may well ask, happened?

In brief, we have aggressively dealt with (probably) just one individual (using multiple aliases and accounts) who was abusing the service. We use a variety of techniques to identify abusers before they become a significant threat, and one pinpointed this set of lists yesterday.

While it looks painful to lose this much circulation, believe me - this was an easy decision. Annoying, frustrating - yes. But easy. FeedBlitz thrives on quality: Deliverability is job #1, and maintaining our integrity and ISP relations is key to success there. Having a large list doesn't exempt anyone from the terms of service and is not any protection from our actions as and when an alarm is tripped. We will always deal with abusers quickly and with extreme prejudice.

So: Abuse discovered. Action taken.

Bottom line: our circulation count has moved back to where it was, oh, around the end of May, pushing us back about 8 weeks in terms of our top line growth. That's OK - I expect we'll be at the 2.5 million mark or thereabouts by the time the July summary is written. And we keep our quality up so your messages get through. That's our job after all.